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And McKinsey never really left the building. A decade later, when John Birt, then director-general of the BBC, stepped down from his job, McKinsey brought him on as a part-time consultant. In 2005 Birt severed all ties with the firm after critics suggested that working for 10 Downing Street in London and McKinsey posed a conflict of interest—as if hiring him shortly after extracting millions of pounds out of the BBC hadn’t been. Birt’s replacement at the BBC’s helm—Greg Dyke—immediately slashed spending on outside consultants by 75 percent.
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